


ashes underneath your nails

by infiniteandsmall



Category: Homestuck, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, F/F, Gen, M/M, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 14:52:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteandsmall/pseuds/infiniteandsmall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes had never been one to shrink from the extraordinary.</p><p>However, he has absolutely no qualms about shrinking from the sharp teeth-tips of the girl in the red glasses.</p><p>*</p><p>Sherlock Holmes meets Terezi Pyrope in a dark alley.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. wormwood and licorice

**Author's Note:**

> A weird little drabble that has a long and elaborate steampunky plot surrounding it if I would ever write it. What is this we just don't know. This is based off of Auther Conan Doyle's book and set in Victorian London vs. any kind of BBC Sherlock verse.  
> Also Terezi gets all up in Sherlock's space in a way that might be triggery for some people.

Sherlock Holmes had never been one to shrink from the extraordinary.

However, he has absolutely no qualms about shrinking from the sharp teeth-tips of the girl in the red glasses.

Her grin is wide that it stretches her skin, turning her chin into a jutting point like a small hammer. Normally in such situations he would be analyzing her clothing, (by the silhouette he’d seen in the darkness of the alley, she was wearing men’s clothes in some form, pants too tight on bony legs and some sort of bulky jacket on top) but the small details are revealing and it is too dark here to see them.

Anyways, even if the oily light of the gaslamps could reach here, he would not be able to take his eyes off her face. The bone structure appears to be that of a Chinaman, but her eyes behind those oddly-shaped red lenses seem to be some light color, probably blue due to their purplish appearance.

She cackles, a ripple of sound halfway between tearing fabric and a loon’s undulations, which seals Sherlock’s decision.

He reaches to draw his pistol.

Before his hand can even close around the ivory handle, she’s grabbed his collar and slammed him against the brick wall.

It’s hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs, and the impact sends a spasm up his spine. The girl leans forward; close enough that he can see over the upper rims of the glasses, close enough that he can see—

The sclera of her eyes is brilliant yellow, not the vague jaundicing of disease but a yellow so saturated it nearly glows, and the veins that run through that yellow are blue-green as clean sea-water.

The dome of her forehead juts harshly, her eyes are too large. Her hair is a strange texture, each strand flat and almost reed-like.

“Hello, there, legislator!” She’s grinning, still, long neck craning closer.

She draws out a grayish nail (almost clawlike, he thinks,) and scratches it across his cheekbone. He feels no pain, merely a numb tingling, though the nail had not appeared wet with any sort of anesthetic. Perhaps it was poison, he thinks, which would explain his sudden inability to shake himself from the grip of a mere girlchild.  

Sucking her nostrils in, she skates her hands over his face. “Mr.—“ another sniff, a hesitation— “Mr. Sourberry Superior!” she announces. Her face twists on concentration, and she reaches out again, a finger outstretched. It takes great concentration to keep from flinching, but she does not scratch him again, just catches a drop of his blood—and then he is faintly aware that the faint tickling on his skin is his own blood trickling down his face—on her fingertip. She sucks into her mouth so hard that her cheeks hollow, her teeth so needle-like that his own fingers twitch in scared sympathy. “And I do believe, a little hint of rotting peach over-thinking, as well!” She draws back, letting go of his collar to clap her hand together. He still cannot move, though he is pinned only by her knee. “And of course,” she says, grabbing his wrists and twisting. “A little raspberry regret, and some plastic-wrapped plum of your human sopor-like substances, all in one delicious delicious fruity sundae!”

Her voice rises slightly, as creaky as an unoiled hinge, and he still feel paralyzed, lips heavy and hanging. She lets go of him, stepping back, and he crumples to the ground. His pulse pounds through his wrists, and he, Sherlock Holmes, can feel the panicked thrashing of a dying animal in the scrabble of his heels in the pavement as he tries and fails to gain his feet.

And then—the thoughts he’s tried to suppress, the instincts of a lower man rising in a blotting rush, nightmare teeth and gaudy strange canvas shoes laced up to above her ankle blood-red—she is crouching to look into his eyes, and he is acutely aware that his throat is exposed to more than the cold late-fall wind and damp London fog.

“Terezi!” someone calls from the entrance to the alley, and her head whips up.

Another silhouette, just as skinny and bony as this girl, is backlit like some sort of avenging angel out of a fanciful preacher’s sermon. Then he shifts slightly, turning to a three-quarter profile, and Sherlock can take in the details of his clothing. He’s dressed slightly more respectably than the girl, in a red frock-coat and black trousers with worn knees, with a heavy watch-chain draped over the front of his coat. He takes his pocket-watch out and looks at the time, it is large and oddly-shaped, like a spoked gear.

He is, however, wearing the same strange canvas shoes as the girl, and a pair of dark glasses with oversized lenses and a bar across the top. “We haven’t got all night to be menacing your fellow law-enforcers in alleys,” he says, closing his watch with a click and sliding it back into his pocket.

“Of course,” the girl mumbles, and when her eyes leave his he is able to gather his wits and fumble for his gun.

“Oh, nuh-uh, Mr. Legeslator,” she says, and she kneels on the dirty cobblestones and closes the space between their faces, blue-grey pointed tongue sliding out. She licks his cheek, licks in a stripe across the scratch she’d made, and now the scratch begins to burn.

With one last manic grin, she stands up, licking her thin, cracked lips. “They ought to sell you in a soda shop. What a wonderful flavor.”

“Terezi,” the boy at the end of the alley says.

“Coming!” she calls, and then leaning towards him, she whispers, “see you to-morrow, Mr. Legislator. Your friend will come fetch you soon.”

She walks with long, straight-foward strides, walk away from him, by the grace of God. At the end of the alley, she links arms with the boy and says something softly to him.

She does not look over her shoulder as she walks away. Sherlock’s pistol has a silencer. The bullet seems to pass right through her, but for the spreading blue stain on her back as she and the boy cross the street. 


	2. takes one away from the everyday place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson has become accustomed to the unusual.  
> However, he has not become accustomed to picking up his dear friend and house-mate in a dark alley.  
> *  
> Terezi Pyrope meets Sherlock Holmes in a dark alley. John Watson is out-of-the-loop. Shenanigans are ensuing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Absynthe" by Emilie Autumn.  
> So welp I continued this thank you to everyone who read and/or left comments or kudos! This one's short because I didn't need to write any more from John's POV but I wanted to write some at least.

John Watson has become accustomed to the unusual.

However, he is not accustomed to picking up his dear friend and house-mate in a dark alley.

Or, to amend that sentence, he is not accustomed to picking up his dear friend and house-mate in a dark alley in such a state (he is quite accustomed to dark alleys, smoky ale-houses, and the like).

Sherlock Holmes, the world’s greatest private consulting detective, sits slumped against a dirt-browned brick wall next to a heap of empty beer bottles. His posture is the same as when he is brilliant and chaotic with narcotics, but his eyes have none of the glitter. They are dazed and dull, and his mouth is slack on one side and pulled tight on the other. His cheek is scratched high on the bone, blood dried dark brown on his face.

“Eh! What happened here?” John says, and he can’t help but wonder what sort of injections Sherlock was experimenting with this, what strange blends of chemicals.

“It’s not what you think,” Sherlock says wryly.

“Well, then I suggest you tell me what it is,” and John is vaguely irritated at the slight smirk on Sherlock’s lips. Sherlock does not smirk often. He is either so rattled by his experiments that he cannot keep his face straight and expressionless as he always does, or, he has witnessed something extraordinary.

Something worthy of discovering and uncovering, a puzzle to piece together.

Another case.

“Help me to my feet first. You might as well offer me your hand.”

“This is ridiculous,” John grouses, but does as Sherlock suggests. This action, which falls so squarely in their usual way of relating to each other, which is so usual as to be almost comforting, abates John’s irritation slightly.

Sherlock brushes dirt off of his rent and soaked trousers and adjusts his coat on his thin shoulders.

“You shall never guess what I encountered last night, Watson,” he says conversationally, though he blinks in the relatively brighter light of the open streets as they emerge from the alley.

“A nice thin needle filled with something poisonous and a rowdy group from some bar who disliked your scrutiny?”

“You are none too imaginative, are you?” Sherlock says. “Obviously that is what one would expect to encounter around these parts of the city at night. However, that narrative is not noteworthy in any way.”

“And the one you are preparing to tell is?”

“Certainly.”

“Pray tell, then.”

“While I do hate to provide you only with some tantalizing and overblown hints and then make you wait, I would prefer to discuss this over breakfast and some hot tea.” His face looks distant, which is an expression that is relatively normal for Sherlock. However, what he says next is not. Certainly not.

Sherlock Holmes has the proverbial mind of a steel trap. Any minute detail of dress or manner is duly noted by him, no passing reference to an acquaintance is forgotten. Within a few seconds he will have summarized the information presented and made it into an almost mathematical blow-by-blow of facts and proofs. While normal men still struggle to comprehend a situation, he will have already created a million cause-and-effect scenarios in order to figure out the next course of action.

And yet this man is looking at Watson from the corner of one red-rimmed eye, and saying, “If I am truthful, then I will admit that I have yet to fully mull over the matter and work it over, so to speak. Besides, I have not eaten since yesterday afternoon and could use some bread-and-butter, at least.”

“Of course,” John murmurs.

They walk back to Baker Street, Sherlock looking less like a man of science and more like a prizefighter who’d lost a round—or at least, had a few too many pints the night before—and John looking less like a distinguished doctor approaching middle age and more like a man who has seen his father shrink in fear.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not even plotted out literally going out on a limb here we're doing this we're making this happen!


	3. cater to every wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave Strider obviously does not indulge every passing wish that flits though the head of the inhuman girl who is currently sleeping on a pile of wrinkled waist-coats and undershirts and velveteen puppets his brother had left behind in the sitting room of his flat.  
> *  
> Backstory is divulged! Dumb forth-wall shit is messed with! Steampunk is mentioned. Kind of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd here we go! Fitting homestuck characters in the Victorian era is when the fun begins. Chapter titles still from Emilie Autumn's Absynthe.

Dave Strider obviously does not indulge every passing wish that flits though the head of the inhuman girl who is currently sleeping on a pile of wrinkled waist-coats and undershirts and velveteen puppets his brother had left behind in the sitting room of his flat.

However, he does indulge a good number of them, aided and abetted by the inhuman boy who sleeps in his bed.

Which is how he ended up purchasing a small bound booklet entitled “A Study In Scarlet” from the musty corner bookstore after it caught Terezi’s discerning (to all hints of justice and sensationalist detective stories) eye.

It wasn’t like Terezi slept much anyways (which was why she had the laundry pile and Karkat the bed), but for at least a week he could hear her puttering around at odd hours of the night, murmuring to herself and devouring all the chocolate biscuits he had stocked up in the back corner of his cabinets, utterly immersed the adventures of one Sherlock Holmes.

Dave is pretty sure that the majority of the booklet is complete horseshit, a steaming pile of horseshit that is made up only of horseshit and no other shit by-products. He is also pretty sure that “Doctor” John Watson is not a real doctor. None of this is really his concern, and he would have continued hiding all newly-brought boxes of biscuits in his mattress and underwear drawer like a squirrel hoarding nuts for the Goddamned bitter oak famine and sleeping with his pillow over his head if Karkat hadn’t stepped in.

His “shitty fake detective intervention,” as he termed it, was elaborately staged and planned out to the last gesture and hair-tug, yet somehow ended in Dave agreeing to find Sherlock Holmes and let Terezi talk to him.

“If that plan had been a goddamned greyhound, it would be put down for losing the race so miserably. If that plan had been a fucking political candidate they would be fleeing the country in shame. If that plan had been—“

“Shut up!” Karkat muttered, flopping onto the bed. “You asslicker.”

“I cannot comprehend how everything you do leads to you achieving the exact opposite of the effect you intended. I do not even begin to fucking comprehend it. Also I haven’t licked an ass in about five days and want you to know that your insinuations wound me deeply.”

“I told you to shut your oversized squishing mouth pursers, Strider,” Karkat says, tossing a pillow at him.

“Your wish is my command,” Dave says. He is out of chocolate biscuits and would rather go buy more than listen to Karkat moan and groan into his pillows and sing his sad songs about how his life is swirling down the goddamn Thames.

Besides, he has an appointment with a certain blue eyed-boy at five o’ clock sharp, and never let it be said that Dave Strider is anything but timely.

 

But Dave Strider has the tendency to get a bit ahead of himself. Let us back this horse up a few steps and get a closer to the beginning of this story.

Who is this us? Perhaps it is a step out of close third person, a skirting closer to the edges of the forth wall if not a beginning to bang on said wall with a crowbar, “us” being a term used to encompass both metaphorical author, narrator, and readers.

Yes. For now let us leave it at that.

There is true no point at which a story begins, for stories are influenced by circumstances that happened years before the characters were born, by people who never walked the cobblestones of London, and by events that are unrecorded yet crucial. Yet for this one, the moment in which Dave Strider’s life changed unalterably from ordinarily extraordinary to amazingly bizarre was the moment in which the strange glowing aero-plane landed on the roof of his apartment house and then promptly disappeared.

However, his roof was not completely empty, for where the aero-plane had been now stood two figures, blinking and dazed into the London fog, with skin as grey as ashes and small garish horns glowing like fire in their messes of dark hair.

 

Dave Strider had grown up raised in an apartment on the second-from-the-top floor by a brother who refused to even hint at their true parentage and who supported them by working days at a livery stable and running a Punch-and-Judy sort of puppet show that grew very... _lewd_ as the night approached. He’d been taught to wield a blade, scratch a record, speak Japanese, and never show an outsider the true color of his eyes. He was as accustomed to the unusual.

As a result, he decided the only course of action upon finding such inhuman figures was to take them back to his apartment and give them a place to sleep. London’s alleys were cold and unfriendly places at night and he had plenty of space.

 

He was not particularly sociable, he belonged to neither clubs nor even a church, slid his monthly rent under his landlady’s door in an envelope. He occasionally talked to some of the ladies who stood on his street corners at night, but he was close friends with only one of them. He haunted questionable circles and met a boy with a wide buck-toothed grin and more optimism than should be possible and after a while thought about slipping off his tinted glasses in the boy’s presence.

Yet he became fond of both of these aliens very quickly, until one day he woke up and saw the fringe of black lashes on the alien boy’s sharp cheekbones, the way his mouth was held softly as he slept, and realized he could not imagine life without him.

One day he stepped back into his apartment after work to find the alien girl padding around in a pair of too-large carpet slippers with a cup of tea in one hand and “A Study in Scarlet” in the other, absolutely rapt, black ink around the corners of her mouth and blue-green eyes unseeing and radiant.

These revelations weren’t any more lifechanging than the buck-toothed boy finding out that Dave Strider’s eyes were red as blood. They led to no great battles, to no discoveries, to no journeys across the world.

However, it did lead to a number of moments in which Dave Strider would look up from a sheet of staff paper and smile inwardly to see them curled up playing chess or their drawn games on their computers. It led to nights spent laughing as they tried to teach Dave how play those games, or days spent as Karkat showed him the language of the small green-and-wire chips that created the computers. It led to a warm expansion someone between his ribs when he was walking home on damp foggy nights.

It also led to his ultimate unabilty to refuse when Terezi begged to meet Sherlock Holmes in the flesh.

 

He had already had some experience searching for missing persons, and obviously Sherlock Holmes was not missing, merely somewhat reclusive.

He pulled strings in several of the more unsavory circles, slipped the right people the right amount of coins. Dave Strider preferred not to think once he started doing things, and so he didn’t think about why he was willing to go to such great lengths to please and toothy troll girl who showed affection by licking his face and biting his shoulders, and by extension the grumpy troll boy who guarded himself but was plain as the horns on his head when it came to how he felt about Terezi.

 

This was why he was walking a jittering bloodstained Terezi Pyrope back home from roughing up a (actually a hundred percent real) detective when he saw his brother for the first time since Dirk Strider had kissed a boy square on the mouth and walked out of the front door two months ago.  


	4. as smoke fills the sky close your eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your name is Calliope, and you are obviously not any sort of ridiculous narrative construct. The very idea is insulting.
> 
> You are obviously not a little green skull monster, either. The idea!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter four! Two more perspectives but I combined them since they were so short. Hope everyone can read through their update tears (HUSSIIIIIIIIEE).  
> And yeah I can't figure out how to get rid of that dumb note from the first chapter at the end, but I am definitely continuing this because it's loads of fun.

Your name is Calliope, and you are obviously not any sort of ridiculous narrative construct. The very idea is insulting.

You are obviously not a little green skull monster, either. The idea!

Of course you are a half-tangible thought huddling hiding in the recesses of your brother’s brain. That is self-evident.

It is also self-evident that your brother is, in fact, a little green skull monster.

To step out of from the lexicon of the century your thoughts are currently mimicking, duh.

Now that those reiterations of clear facts are out of the way, we can get down the business!

Who is we, anyways? You don’t really know, but since you appear to be privy to all of their thoughts, it must also be inhabiting you brother’s brain.

He never was good at cleaning out his closet. Of course he doesn’t think to tidy up his brain.

 

Your brother lives in a hole in the ground.

He literally lives in a hole in the ground. You are not being metaphorical here, although of course metaphors are absolutely excellent! A lot of your friends like to use the most ridiculous metaphors, and though you have not yet mastered the use of them your friends’ sure are funny!

When you can hear them, that it.

It can be rather difficult to have friends when you are trapped in your brother’s brain.

Especially when your brother’s body is trapped in a rainbow sarcophagus under twelve feet of dirt and two layers of cobblestones.

*

Kanaya Maryam is named—

Her name is kanaya

And she likes gardens and warm warm sun but it’s _so cold_ and soft silk and warm wool and the sweet sweet pear juice that would drip down her arms.

She once had someone who called her darling, her darling kanaya—

She can remember. She can almost remember.

Her teeth clack together and its so dark behind her eyelids but it is just as dark when she opens her eyelids. She cannot die in this way, she will not die, but she will go dark.

A sort of pale luminescence had been hanging about her like a floating chiffon shawl. Dim, but still holding on.

It flickers and goes out.


	5. run from the meadowland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose Lalonde is not cut out to follow in Roxy’s footsteps.
> 
> Where Roxy is joking and comforting and interested, Rose is prickly and blunt and self-contained. Where Roxy longs for touch and loves it and leans into it, Rose prefers to have her space. Where Roxy enjoys talking to people and laughing with them, Rose prefers to observe, if not retreat to the privacy of her bedroom with a good book and a cup of tea (or on less fortunate nights, stacks of letters to reply to and bills to pay).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last character intro before we get into some more action. Rose Lalonde because she's the bomb.com duh. 
> 
> And yeah I am defs continuing this but can't get rid of the note at the bottom! Chapter title still (still!) from Absynthe by Emilie Autumn.

Rose Lalonde is not cut out to follow in Roxy’s footsteps.

Where Roxy is joking and comforting and interested, Rose is prickly and blunt and self-contained. Where Roxy longs for touch and loves it and leans into it, Rose prefers to have her space. Where Roxy enjoys talking to people and laughing with them, Rose prefers to observe, if not retreat to the privacy of her bedroom with a good book and a cup of tea (or on less fortunate nights, stacks of letters to reply to and bills to pay).

For now, it works out well. Roxy goes out every night, comes home late and sleeps in late, while Rose keeps the finances in order, tends to the house, goes marketing, and knits some lace to sell once in a while. Roxy has time to rest and mess around with her machinery and biology experiments, Rose has time to work on her book.

It is hardly the sort of life that preachers’ tracts would have one believe, nothing out of _The Crushed Flower_ here. They are certainly not the stuff of Sunday-school novels, but they get on well enough.

Well enough that Sunday nights are Roxy’s night off, although Rose is starting to suspect that they haven’t been as “off” lately as they had once been.

She should be here any minute now, Rose thinks, and doesn’t even start when the telltale “shave and a haircut” knock is rapped out on their front door.

Roxy jumps from her chair.

“I’ll get it!” She thrills, and even though she’s only wearing an old gingham housedress, she smoothes the pleats down careful and adjusts the pink ribbon in her hair with one hand as she unlocks the door with the other.

Jane Crocker stands in the dank hallway outside their apartment, with a basket over one arm that is probably filled with some sort of delicious confection.

“Good evening, Jane,” Roxy says, slinging an arm around Jane’s neck. Jane’s shy grin grows wider, and hers is the kind of smile that can only be responded to with another. Rose smiles back at the tableau from her chair by the fireside.

“Good evening to you, too,” Jane says. “And good evening to you, Rose.”

“Likewise,” Rose says.

Jane pulls out her hat-pin and sets it, along with her hat, on the side table. Roxy steers her towards their tiny kitchen, chattering about something or other the whole way.

Rose can smell fresh-baked biscuits and yeasty bread, her cheeks are warm from the flames, and so far her book promises to be engrossing.

There couldn’t be a better Sunday night.

 

Roxy doesn’t like to bring clients home. Says it dispels the illusion.

She hadn’t elaborated, but it had been apparent to Rose what she’d meant. Men do not expect fallen woman, ladies of the night, to have a fireside and a younger sister and a rather strange-looking cat. They do not expect to find her bedroom is no den of sin, but a headboard strung with paper chains that Rose had made when she was young and postcards of various queer and interesting flowers on the walls.

Rose had been given quite a start, then, when one night during Roxy’s working hours she’d been startled from her letter-writing by a series of knocks. As she’d drawn closer to the door to investigate, she realized that the giggles coming from the hallway were not just Roxy’s. Peering through the small hole they’d carved in the door, she’d managed to catch a glimpse of a dark-lashed blue eye and a laughing red mouth before the knocks began again.

Rose had scurried out as soon as she’d heard moaning from Roxy’s bedroom, wandering rather resentfully through the London street with only her shawl and a small handgun.

No shops were open, so in the end she sat on the doorstep of their apartment building and began knitting a passive-aggressively congratulatory lavender striped scarf for Roxy, intending to present it to her affixed with a note on her finest paper saying something along the lines of, “I hope you enjoyed your Sapphic encounter as much as I enjoyed the damp of the street at one o’ clock.” She was still attempting to mentally revise the note to make is more “passive” and less “aggressive” when she was nearly stepped upon by the blue-eyed girl as she tried to close the door softly behind her.

“I’m so sorry!” She whispered, offering a hand to help Rose up. Rose did not take it.

The girl was certainly pretty—not only were her eyes dark-lashed and beautifully colored, they were nicely shaped and met Rose’s with frank friendliness. She was on the shorter, stouter side, with full breasts and wide hips, dressed nicely but comfortably in a blue dress that reached only to her ankles, showing sturdy brown boots.

She’d seemed a little tipsy when she’s first arrived, but she seemed to have sobered up a little now.

“I’m Jane, I’m so sorry you had to—“

“It’s fine,” Rose said. “I can’t say that this happens often, but I don’t suppose I could begrudge Roxy a good time, could I?” She could be so polite it hurt. She could make her voice sound like bloody sugarplums.

Perhaps the note should read, “I hope your Sapphic encounter was not interrupted by ceaseless apologies brought about by fumbling caused by mutual inebriation.” She just wasn’t sure—

“I’m Rose,” Rose said, taking Jane’s proffered hand and clasping it firmly.

As she does, the bells of the church down the street ring two, and Jane starts.

“Oh—oh, I really must go,” she stutters, and, releasing Rose’s hand, she hastens down the stairs two at a time. “Lovely meeting you,” she calls as she walks down the street, skirts fluttering behind her.

 

Roxy was gushingly joyful the next morning, mooning over bread-and-butter at breakfast.

It was almost enough to make Rose unravel the scarf.

Almost.

“Isn’t she just the lov-e-li-est?” Roxy said with her mouthful. “The absolute lovleliest. Lovinest? Loveliest.”

“Go back to bed, please,” Rose said in reply, crossing out yet another sentence too ink-blotted by her distraction to be decipherable.

“—Miss Jane Crocker,  completely perfect—“ Roxy went on, completely ignoring Rose.

“Wait, Jane Crocker?” Rose said, nearly dropping her pen in her inkwell in surprise. “The daughter of Mrs. General Crocker?”

“Yeah, yeah, Jane Crocker,” Roxy says. “Jane Crocker, s’e’s like the goddamn springtime—” and her head drops into the crook of her elbows, resting against the wood of the table.

Rose sighs, but something shifts in her thoughts of Jane, and when Ms. Crocker comes calling at a more respectable hour several days later, Rose lets her in with a smile.


	6. absynthe and marigold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this chapter took so long to get out! Life did a number on me and I haven't had the time to sit down and write. Hoping that things will clear up and that I'll be able to go back to updating more frequently. Here we get to see Sherlock's course of action and a little bit of John.

John slices bread and puts the kettle on while Sherlock collapses in the overstuffed arm-chair without even turning on the gas.

John lets him sit in the dark. The kitchen is cheery with the hiss of steam and glint of light off the bread knife.

When he brings out the tea tray (very domestic, he’s accustomed enough to it that the thought is amusing rather than alarming, indicative of a long period of bachelorhood and indicating capability rather than emasculating), Sherlock is sketching on one of John’s old medical journals, long frantic lines. A vial of some bluish substance as well as a piece of fabric is lying on the tea table.

“I need some sort of fashion magazine,” Sherlock says, leaning forward.

John can’t help raising an eyebrow as he sets the tray down. “Haven’t you written a monograph on the subject yet? It would hardly be more of an obscure topic than others you have written about.”

“I must admit that I am not up-to-date on the latest men’s fashions,” Sherlock says.

“I’m sure Mrs. Hudson has a magazine of that sort stashed away somewhere,” John says.

Sherlock snatches a piece of buttered bread and pulls his coat on again.

“Did you cut out a piece of your coat?” John says. There is a square-shaped, neatly snipped hole in Sherlock’s once-tidy wool overcoat. Its size matches the size of the swatch of fabric sitting next to the glass vial filled with the viscous blue fluid.

Sherlock cocks his head to the side. “Of course,” he says, as if it’s perfectly obvious, and lets the door slam behind him.

John sinks onto the other arm-chair, the one directly across from Sherlock’s. Strange how even Sherlock’s sudden departures feels normal, domestic. He’s spent plenty of nights sitting in this very spot, staring at the shadows and the impressions of Sherlock’s shape in the fabric.

The piece of the coat is stained with something that smells of ether. Picking up the vial, John notes that the fluid within has crusted and clotted a way very reminiscent of blood. In fact, carefully unscrewing the vial’s top, the liquid smells of blood, too, iron and sharpness.

Setting both items back on the table, unable to deduce much about the case from them, he picks up his teacup. The tea is much too strong now, but John is accustomed to that, too. It happens, when one lives with someone like Sherlock.

 

 

Sherlock Holmes does not guess.

He does not suppose and him and haw and perhaps and maybe.

All evidence, all observations point to one conclusion.

He had been ambushed in an alley by something with ashen skin and blue blood, with some kind of numbing agent in its claws.

John is surely asleep at the apartment in Baker St., but Sherlock knows there will be no sleep for him to-night. He had been intending to prepare another dose of cocaine, but there’s not need for that. His mind races, filled with information and threads to tie and ends to connect. He no longer has to search for trouble in the streets, in the faces of those he passes—the unkempt young man, face white as chalk but smeared with a dark greasy substance around the mouth, too-large battered bulgy top hat placed at a jaunty angle on his head, the plump, well-to-do young lady in a well-made blue dress with plush sleeves and a basket over one arm. The information rushed at him like a wall of water to pull him under, and if he did not try to draw conclusions but drew his focus onto his current case, it did not swallow him. Magazine in his pocket, shop windows searched, he still must test the chemical properties of the blood that he had scooped from the puddle the girl had dripped behind her as she’d walked away—of course, he must hail a cab and get back to the apartment as quickly as possible, but something about the wretched beggar who is slumped on the stoop of one of high-fashion stores catches his attention.

From the size of the one foot that peeks out of the tattered blanket, the suffering bundle of humanity seems to be a young girl. Her shoe is caked with the black garbage-ridden mud of the slums, but it is well-made and foreign, men’s shoes that had once been a coquettish red.

The strip of skin visible between her shoe and the top of her faded reddish skirt (also of a fine fabric) is grey-green, not bluish-red as chapped and chilled human skin would be.

The blanket covers the rest of her body and her head, but Sherlock has seen all he needs.

He tosses a ha’penny by her head, but even the ring of metal on the cobblestones does not awaken her.

He bends down and peels back the blanket, only to find her breathing shallow and barely-there. She’ll surely die if she is left out another night.

He looks down at her dirty black hair, sticking up around red and orange and yellow horns. The inhuman size and tilt of her eyes.

There is only one thing to do.

Carefully arranging the blanket so it covers her skin and horns, he picks her up. She weighs little more then a bag of laundry and hangs and boneless and uncomprehending from his arms as if she was one.

“My daughter,” he explains to the cabbie, making his face and voice that of a concerned yet relieved, slightly doddering middle-class salesman. “She ran from home and I fear that she’s in a bad way.”

“Eh,” the cabbie grunts in reply. “And where’ll ye be goin’?”

“221 Baker Street,” Sherlock says in a response. “My doctor’s address.”


	7. the fruit of your taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirk is standing on the sidewalk a few door down from Dave’s apartment, and Dave feels something sharp rattle against his ribs like he’d eaten shards of steel for breakfast. Dirk looks like he always has, quiet and withdrawn from the bustle of the street, in it but not of it, foreign and faintly uncomfortable. Stupid strange tinted glasses with the points and one orange glass earring and black fingerless gloves that shows hands scratched and scarred from wire and the sharp edges of metal sheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have not posted in a while!   
> This was partly because of laziness and life stuff and the usual but also because I started writing this chapter and realized that I'd left a huge-ass plot point completely dangling (hahaha dangling). Basically I was very alarmed because duh I do not want dangling plot points and so I decided to step back and plot a little and make some lists and charts and stuff and as I wrote the more I realized WOW THIS STORY HAS A HUGE CAST AND I NEED SOME SERIOUS STRUCTURE HERE. So yeah I started that but I'm not close to being comfortable so I will be updating a lot slower until I get all that under control. It's a big story with a lot of things going on and I was pretty much winging it, but I don't think I can keep going like that.  
> Oh my god though I am so sorry for the wait

Dirk is standing on the sidewalk a few door down from Dave’s apartment, and Dave feels something sharp rattle against his ribs like he’d eaten shards of steel for breakfast. Dirk looks like he always has, quiet and withdrawn from the bustle of the street, in it but not of it, foreign and faintly uncomfortable. Stupid strange tinted glasses with the points and one orange glass earring and black fingerless gloves that shows hands scratched and scarred from wire and the sharp edges of metal sheets.

His brother, and he is standing outside of Dave’s apartment as if he had maybe—

Don’t hope, don’t hope, Dave thought quietly, and Terezi digs her sharp fingernails into his arm.

“Who is that kid, Dave? He looks like he tried to veer down coolkid lane and got lost,” she hisses, loud in his ear.

“That’s—“ and the words stick in his throat.

“He looks like you, but his clothing is not half as awesome,” Terezi says. “His kicks, in particular, are not up to standards.”

“What standards?” Dave says absently, and Dirk hasn’t noticed him yet, just stands and scans the houses around him and he must be here to talk to Dave, he must he must he must.

“First tell me who the lost coolkid is and then I will tell you who sets the galactic standards for awesome kicks,” Terezi says, slipping her elbow out of Dave’s and crossing her skinny arms.

“It’s my brother,” Dave says.

“The human brother who left you?” Terezi says, and she sounds even more interested than before. It sounds as if she is interested on a personal level, and it makes Dave wish he had a hat so he could draw it over his eyes and hide. “That is not good. That’s not what a coolkid does. I decided, your brother did not just get lost trying to find coolkid lane. He rammed his starship into an asteroid and took out several planets filled with innocent citizens, going about their lives and trying to buy some delicious human watercolor paints, that’s what he did. And that’s terrible.” Her tone is joking but has risen in both pitch and volume, and people are beginning to notice them.

“Shuuuuuu,” Dave croons, beginning a series of what Karkat termed “SKILLED SHOOSHPAPS” and Terezi termed “L4V4C1OUS P4L3 4DV4NC3S,” but it is too late.

Dirk is staring at Dave as if he’s never seen him before. Dave can’t tell if their gazes meet, Dirk’s eyes still hidden, but something makes Dirk duck his head and jam his hands in his pocket before stepping off the sidewalk and into the street.

“Wait! Dirk!” Dave calls, but Dirk is lost in the chaos of carriages and carts and people passing by.

He feels like his spine has fallen out of place with defeat as he stares into the street.

“Dave?” Terezi says, patting his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Dave says, but anger’s rising in his chest. He needs to be mad at somebody, everybody, but he doesn’t want to be mad at Dirk and oh god he doesn’t want to be mad and Terezi. “Can you—just don’t touch me for a second,” he snaps, sharp as exposed bone, shaking himself out of her grip.

Terezi’s mouth hangs a small silent o for a second, and Dave feels like he just slapped her across the face.

“Terezi—I’m sorry—“

“It is fine, it was my fault, Dave,” she says in a rush. “Seriously, close your mouth, coolkid, you will catch bugbeasts.” She reaches towards his chin almost unconsciously, and Dave lets her, does not push her away, the swirls on the pads of her fingers thick and ridged and the edges of her fingernails pointy on Dave’s neck.

“I messed it up,” she says. “And so I will fix it.”

She dives into the street, cane clattering to the sidewalk.

“Terezi—“ Dave reaches for her, but she’s slipped out of his grip already, dodging under a horse’s neck and skipping around a cart and leaping from one dry patches to the next.

He follows her. It’s not as though he really has another choice.

“How did you do that with the might of your smell-o-vision alone?” He says when they’re on the other side, dusting splotches of mud off his pants. “I nearly died and I’m pretty sure I knocked all the turnips out of some poor lady’s basket.”

“Turnips?” Terezi says. “They sound sour and delicious.”

“They’re not.”

Terezi shrugs. “What do you know of taste, coolkid? You said cluckbeast eggs tasted like eggs. They do not. They taste like sunshine and milk.”

“They taste like eggs to me,” Dave says.

“That’s because you don’t use your—“

“Smell-o-vision. You’ve told me that about a million times, but you haven’t told me how you managed to cross that street without getting crushed flat like a fucking Terezi-bread-slice or why you dived into the street in the first place.”

“I dived into the street to fix it, and I will fix it with the same thing that enabled me to cross that street!” Terezi says. “My cane, please.”

“Of course, your royal highness.”

“You mean your hella royal illness!” Terezi says with a grin. “You see, through the use of my marvelous smell-o-vision, I will smell the scent of brother coolkid. I’m sure it will be quite distinctive, and then I can proceed to track brother coolkid throughout the whole city. There is not a hive in London that is safe from the powerful power of my nostrils!” She waves her cane in the air as she speaks, attracting glances from bystanders, and finishes her speech by rubbing her nose on Dave’s face while sniffing loudly.

It is hard to remain stoic while a toothy troll is rubbing their hyperactive smelling organ on one’s cheeks. “Arrrggg! Jesus Christ, get off me!” Dave says, flailing his arms about in a way that will make him squirm, he’s sure, in several hours. “Would you just get down to sniffing, please!”

“But I am,” Terezi says. “Sniffing the delicious strawberry sauce and cream of your che-e-eks, Dave.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“You meant to confirm the undisputable fact that you are no fun. I have evidence as to your lack of a merry spirit, Dave. I do believe that you are no better than the Crinch that stole Gristmas!”

“I have no bloody idea what you are talking about, so can we continue with the sniffing for my brother instead of making me your delicious sundae?”

“Of course,” Terezi says. “I will get right down to that at once. After all, a detective is also very serious about gathering the evidence as soon as possible, before anyone tampers with it! And I can not have anyone tampering with this scent, as you can imagine.” Surreptitiously, she sniffs the wall Dirk had been standing by. “Detecting a pleasant orange flavour,” she mutters, sniffing a little harder. “Undertones of basil and green green apples! Fascinating.”

“Are we done?” Dave says. “What do we do now, oh most esteemed Terezi Holmes?”

Terezi rubs her hands together at the words “Terezi Holmes,” as if she has spent her entire life aspiring to have her name put together with some shitty probably-faking detective who can be pinned to a wall by a skinny seventeen-year-old troll. As if this is some grand badge that she has been longing for someone to pin on her classy plaid trenchcoat. It is ridiculous and also endearing as fuck.

“Of course we are not done! Silly, silly Dave. We must gather the evidence in an exhaustive manner! I must have this scent committed to memory. I must be able to smell it in my sleep and reproduce it in my dreams!”

“Well, don’t let me disturb you, then.”

She nods, satisfied, and continues sniffing. “Cistrusy,” she says after a time, holding up a finger. “Like toothsoap.” 

‘Toothsoap? What—“

“It is committed like the most guilty of prisoners. Its scent has been condemned for life in the prison of my mind,” Terezi says, taking Dave’s arm again. “Now let’s go home and have some chocolate crunchcrumbs and make KK pick a shitty movie while we decide on our course of action.”

“Biscuits.”

“Crunchcrumbs.”

“I don’t understand why you have to make up a shitty word for something we already have a perfectly good word for—“

“We will scribble on the tins and change it.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> authors note officially longer than the actual update probably welp.


	8. keep your apples to yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lamps are already lit by the time John hears Sherlock’s footsteps on the stairs. His back hurts from the strange angle he’d been slumped in, waiting in the chair with the gas dimmed. The sound of Sherlock’s key in the lock still does not jog him fully awake, and so it is as if in a dream when he sees Sherlock’s figure silhouetted against light from the street, with a small figure dangling limp from his arms. He is gaunt and fearsome at night.
> 
> “John, I have found someone who will prove to be of great importance to the case,” Sherlock says, setting the bundled up child down on the chaise lounge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Kanaya *hugs the baby*

The lamps are already lit by the time John hears Sherlock’s footsteps on the stairs. His back hurts from the strange angle he’d been slumped in, waiting in the chair with the gas dimmed. The sound of Sherlock’s key in the lock still does not jog him fully awake, and so it is as if in a dream when he sees Sherlock’s figure silhouetted against light from the street, with a small figure dangling limp from his arms. He is gaunt and fearsome at night.

“John, I have found someone who will prove to be of great importance to the case,” Sherlock says, setting the bundled up child down on the chaise lounge. “However, she is close to death and requires some medical care. Fix her up; do whatever you need, I really do need a bite to eat,” and he straightens and is gone, leaving only sounds of rummaging about in the cabinets and this huddled mass of humanity swiping grime and street muck on the very posh brocade fabric of the chaise lounge.

“Boil some water, please,” John calls.

“For the patient?” Sherlock says.

“Well, yes. But I suppose if I’m going to be up half the night I’ll need something to keep me going.”

“Of course,” Sherlock says.

“And some clean clothes, as well? These are probably covered in blood and mud and who-knows-what-else.”

“As long as you take care not to rip those,” Sherlock says, poking his head out of the door. He is no longer some fearful child snatcher. He has two spots of red high on his cheeks from the cold.

“I will certainly be careful. I’ve heard many a lecture about the importance of clothes in deductions.”

Sherlock nods, satisfied, and commences fiddling around in the kitchen.

From the delicacy of the boots peeking out from beneath the blanket, their owner is perhaps a younger girl who was once in better circumstances that she is now. The strip of bare skin between the tops of her boots and the hem of her skirt is grey-green, but not in the way that gangrenous flesh does.

Puzzled, John pulls back the blanket to reveal her face, and nearly leaps back in surprise. He has seen many strange things since he began living with Sherlock Holmes in the flat at 211 Baker St., but never once had he beheld anything like this. The girl’s face was delicate, and despite the sharpness of her cheekbones and chin she still appeared to be no older than sixteen or seventeen. None of this is strange to John. It is like peering into the face of any other slum child, when looking into the eyes of an eight year old was like looking into the eyes of an eighty year old. What is strange is that the greyish cast extends to the skin of her face and neck and shoulders, and that there is a pair of curved horns protruding from her glossy black hair.

They hold a pearlish sheen and are colored like a flame, reddish at the base, lightening into orange before fading into yellow.

They must be some kind of mask, some kind of facepaint and a strange headdress. John parts her hair, and runs his fingers around the smooth base of the horn, heart pounding strangely. The girl twitches but does not awake, but she is not a girl, she is—

The horns sink into the skin of her scalp surrounded by some sort of keratinous material, like a cuticle on a fingernail.

She is not a girl, she is—

John drops the blanket to cover the— _thing’s_ face once more.

“Sherlock?” He says, casting about in his mind for an explanation, and upon not finding one, turning, as usual, to someone brilliant far above any of his capabilities to be.

Sherlock, carrying a stack of rags and rolled bandages and a pot of hot water, does not offer any explanations. He merely raises one eyebrow and says, “Please get on with it, Doctor.”

“It’s not human,” John says.

“Of course not. Its eyes are much too large for any human’s skull shape, additionally, its blood vessels appear green, as you can see on her wrists—“

“Of course I know why it’s not a human! What I want to know is where did you find it and why did you bring it here?”

“I was about to explain that to you before I left. But I know that you do have some degree of curiosity, so I’m sure you examined the items I left behind for you,” Sherlock jerks his head towards the tea table. “Those should go a long way towards explaining why keeping this inhuman creature alive is important.”

“They really don’t,” John says flatly. “If you could explain, finally?”

Sherlock’s lower lips twists in a strange way. “Stabilize it, first. Then I shall explain at my leisure.”

“It could be dangerous,” John says, holding out, but Sherlock has asked and Sherlock knew things John did not. Sherlock did not do things without reason, and so Sherlock does not deign to reply.

“I will only treat it if you agree to help me restrain it before it wakes up,” John says, and it is an empty threat but Sherlock still bows his head slightly in acknowledgement.

“Of course,” Sherlock says. “Now, here are some bandages and hot water. I will go find some suitable clothes, and you can begin removing its old ones. Don’t bandage anything, yet, however. I want to be present to observe.”

“Thank you,” John says, beginning to ease the shoes off _its_ feet. They are grey-green, the nails of the toes sharp and clawlike, monsterous and terrifying, yet the smooth arch of the foot is familar, the dry toughness of the soles, almost achingly human. Her long dark eyelashes brush her cheek, fluttering slightly, lips dry and cracked, but it is not a human girl, it is not a child fallen asleep at a party. It is a freak, a scientific anomaly, surely, some sort of experiment? Sherlock had offered nothing, and so John lays a cold cloth over the nearly-frostbitten feet and debates whether he should allow himself to feel pity.

*

she does not stir. she still cannot muster the energy to move or use her gift of gab. yet she knows by the tone, the dismissal, the fear, that she is nothing to them.

her lipstick sits in her captchalogue, still smeared in purple. she will bide her time and use them to gain her strength.

she will find the girl. she will find the stitches of the game and mend them. she will keep them alive. 


	9. how shall I pray

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yet again: I'm so sorry this took so long to post! I had an unexpected bout of gender dysphoria which totally threw me for a loop, and while I did write because writing is how I work through things, it was all Rose and Dirk and Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson going through the usual histrionics and was completely unreadable and also way too personal. Buuuut Habitrpg was an enormous help in pulling me out of that and getting me off my butt and writing/cleaning/taking care of myself, so I'm plugging it here. Seriously, it's very helpful and is a great site.

 

Rose Lalonde’s shoulders tense up to her ears without her even realizing it as she walks home from the post office. It’s been weeks since she’s received a letter from Jade, and though it was probable that Jade was simply immersed in some exploration of her grounds or scientific experiment, darker possibilities are plaguing her. Jade lives alone with only several stuffed family members. If she was hurt or sick, there would be no one to care for her but her dog, Bec. And while Bec sounded uncommonly competent for a large white German Shepherd, a dog could not bandage bullet wounds or soothe a fever, to Rose’s knowledge.

Rose is accustomed to not having many friends, but Jade is dear to her, despite the fact that they have never met in person. It was through chance that they had met—Jade had sent a letter to her cousin, Jake, who lives in the apartment next to them, and it had been delivered to Rose instead—but it was through the very pleasing way in which their personalities fit that the friendship was continued. Jade permitted Rose to keep her facade of dark disinterest while simultaneously seeing right through it, and felt comfortable to pull back her curtain of constant happiness when she wrote to Rose. And for all their deep conversations, Rose treasured their ridiculous letters almost as much. She could not imagine life without laughing late at night over a lime-inked sheet over paper while Roxy wrinkles her nose and tries to guess at the source of Rose’s hilarity. She cannot imagine life without Jade, but she also cannot banish the heavy fizz of nerves in her stomach, like a cocktail before breakfast. And so she walks home from the post tense as a French noun waiting for an article and cannot even bring herself to imagine the elaborate mental problems of people she passes on the street.

 

_Knock, knock, knock._

Two short knocks on her bedroom wall.

_Are you there?_

Two long knocks back, _knock. Knock._

_Yes._

The rustle of paper and the scratch of a pen. Rose waits expectant as a piece of paper marked with Dirk's typical bright orange ink is worked through the crack between the floor and the baseboards.

Sup

Nothing else. Typical. Rose rolls her eyes and takes up her own violet inkpot to write a reply.

Do you have anything to discuss with me or are you just being loquacious as usual? Of course, it is customary for you to at least deliver me a greeting, which is mannerly, in a manner which is not particularly mannerly. However, I am still capable of appreciating the effort, and so I shall return your greeting: Hello. Not much is “s’up,” though I am slightly concerned as I haven’t received a letter from Jade in several weeks. What is “s’up” with you?

She slips it back under the baseboard and waits for a reply.

God. You are practically a parody of yourself, Rose Lalonde. You take your character to ridiculous extents. It is a fuckin joy to watch. Look how this first sentence is wrapped in so many layer of sarcasm it’s like a gift on Christmas morning wrapped by a five year old who just discovered glue. It’s beautiful, how at first glance it appears to be simply poking fun at my extremely terse greeting, but another layer is revealed upon realizing that I am by nature rather on the longwinded side, and also stuck on the side like some kind of self-deprecating ribbon bow is the third meaning, which is you poking fun at your own wordy manner of speaking. Beautiful. Then there is your humouring quotes around “s’up,” with—ah, it kills me—the perfect added touch of the apostrophe, demonstrating that you know completely its origin and intentions while throwing both out the proverbial window like a bachelor’s burnt toast. You never cease to be a gift.

You still have not explained to me what, exactly, is “s’up” with you. I sense avoidance.

Ain’t avoiding nothing. Just thought a little histrionics were necessary to prevent the statement of the issue at hand from seeming too bare-bones.

I’m waiting.

Fine.

Rose hands the paper back without writing anything. 

I get it.

Rose does not even glance at the paper before she slips it under the crack again.

I’m telling you, hold your petticoats on. I saw my bro in the street and I’m pretty sure he saw me, which was probably to be expected considering that I was outside of his apartment hanging around—I don’t know why. It was an emotional action that completely threw away all my calculations that there was a 2.3% chance he’d find me if I stuck to doing things the way I’d planned them, and it was stupid. I was very stupid. But I need to figure out where to go from here.

Why don’t you go talk to him?

Rose waiting, lips pressed together, listening. Dirk didn’t make noises. He was quiet and rather self contained, but he’d lived alone for the first seventeen years of life, and sometimes when he was startled he forgot that other people could heard, lost in his own head, he’d draw in a sharp breath or hiss out an “ohhh.”

It sounded like a choke in his throat, and then the quick scritch of his pen like claw on wood.

I can’t do that.

You haven’t tried. Why did you leave him in the first place? You don’t need to answer, I’ve already figured that out, but think on that. And then think what a horrible thing it was for him.

You think I didn’t think of that? You think I didn’t weigh the pros and cons and calculate them to an inch of their life? I went through every variable and I’m confident that I made the right decision for him.

You made the decision for him because you must control every factor of your life and you couldn’t control him, his reaction and his future. You were afraid.

Of course I was. I will be the first to admit that and that it was and still is an enormous weakness that I cannot shake. Don’t you think that tortures me every night?

Point taken. I’ll leave you be.

It’s fine. Do you want me to send something out to Jake’s place to search for Jake’s cousin?

Rose smiled slightly. Dirk did not want to be alone. That was rare for him, when the fear of being stuck and surrounded in his own head frightened him enough to press for company. Perhaps he was concerned about Jake’s cousin, or even Jade, or even Rose’s worry over Jade.

That—Rose writes, that would be very nice.

A knock on the door sends vibrations through the wall Rose is leaning against. She scribbles a goodbye to Dirk and passes it over to him before going to answer whoever-it-is that is knocking so early at such a strange time. Something must be wrong, Rose thinks, hastening her steps.

It’s Jane, but she is not cheerful and bearing baked goods as she usually is. In fact, her hat is askew, cheeks red from running and eyes red from crying.

“Roxy’s not here, is she?” Jane says, wiping her nose on the sleeve.

“No—no she’s not—“ Rose says, wondering what one should do in this situation. “Do you—do you want some tea?”

Jane Crocker, heir to Crockercorp, is collapsing on the dirty floor outside of Rose’s apartment. “My father is dead,” she whispers. 


End file.
